As I said in another topic, I finished the game a few days ago. Here are my thoughts.
From a gameplay perspective, the game is really fun. More than any other game I've heard of, this game really feels like it was made to take full advantage of the Wii U. Aside from the 3DS, no other system could handle something like this. Almost every single aspect of the gamepad is used in some way. This allows for really complicated core mechanics that nevertheless never feel overwhelming. And it truly encourages you to gain a perfect understanding of almost every single mechanic in order to find the best way to approach every situation. Furthermore, it gives the game a lot of variety. It never ceases to find new ways to utilize its mechanics.
I have mixed thoughts on the presentation, though. On the one hand, what little story there is is full of personality and utterly hilarious. And the outstanding integration of the Wii U's features makes the experience incredibly immersive. However, the visuals in many areas are a bit plain and unremarkable. And most of the game has fairly little in the way of ambience. I don't mind the game not having any music during gameplay. It can work with the right ambience. But I rarely noticed anything like that. There are some levels that both look and sound good, even great on a few occasions, but they only constitute about 20% of the experience. I've played the game three times and I still only remember most of the levels for their gameplay, not their atmosphere.
In terms of gameplay alone, I'd call this one of Nifflas' best games, but my issues with the atmosphere drag it down a bit. Still, I really enjoyed my time with it, and it saddens me that there will probably never be another game like it ever again. Unlike Nifflas and NapNok games, Nintendo failed to create many games that properly utilized the Wii U. Combined with their numerous other fuckups, it deservedly became one of their worst-selling consoles, prompting them to abandon most of its unique features with the Switch. It really is a shame the substantial paid DLC the game was going to receive never happened. Because there will probably never be a market for it ever again.
Some random thoughts about specific details, some of which are spoilers:
-I'd have to agree that the soft landing gear is indeed useless. If I want to dampen my ship's impact, the sticky landing gear works just as well. It would've been more interesting to see something else in its place.
-The game doesn't do a very good job explaining the three different kinds of heat, even if it makes perfect sense in hindsight and allows for a lot of interesting challenges. In particular, it took me quite a while to figure out that artifacts don't read my internal heat, but how much heat I emit.
-Sticking to the ceiling is a lot harder to accomplish than it should be.
-I found it really annoying that my settings get reset every time I die. Especially since the default settings aren't quite optimal even under normal circumstances. The decelerator can run at level 4 without overloading the reactor, so why does it start at 3? And I keep forgetting to charge the booster ahead of time.
-This is a very personal issue, but I get startled easily, so that really load bang the ship makes when getting destroyed almost gave me a heart attack whenever I didn't expect it. Did it really have to be this loud?
-Contrary to some reviewers and the guy above me, I didn't think the endgame was too hard at all. If anything, I thought it was a bit easier than some of the earlier levels. Which makes sense, seeing how it's a reversal of the previous game flow in that it keeps robbing you of more and more abilities. Though it probably would be pretty hard if you don't fully understand how the heat vents work.
-Speaking of which, even though I didn't find most of the game all that atmospheric, the last levels were really good at this. Gradually losing more and more abilities I'd grown to rely on really made me feel increasingly powerless. And the ambience did a good job at conveying that feeling of descending into hopelessness.
-There were some blatant grammatical errors that really shouldn't have slipped through testing.
-The Origin Story DLC was pretty impressive. It did a good job using the game mechanics in new ways and really forced me to consider every conceivable solution. I also liked how challenging it was, save for a few parts that drove me crazy. Level 3 was particularly clever.
-This may be a bug, but the game doesn't seem to save the subtitle settings. I have to disable them again every time I load my current save. Finding a way to watch the opening video without subtitles was especially annoying, seeing how you can't turn them off before watching it for the first time.